The Palatka daily news. (Palatka, Fla.) 1884-1888, 1887-05-05
Cooking and Temperance.

New York Herald
In the Tribune recently appears an in
teresting account of what IS being done
in this city to teach the great art of cook
ing to the daughters of poor people. This
work is really one of the beneficient con-
ceivable. 1t produces more solid
good in more direct way
than any other form of philanthrophy
Silly people are apt to fancy that there
is something undignified, ignoble ,paltry,
about cooking. Inpoint of fact the art
is the indispensable foundation to all
forms of civilization, and ignorance of it
is at the bottom of half the worst evils
that affiict modern society. The condi-
ton of the poor in so-called civilized
countries is for the most part wretched
chiefly because the masses know moth
ing of the proper methods of preparing
food, OF of the selection of it. They as
Il rule, waste their food fund in extrav-
agant and inIudlcious purchases, and
then they spoil half they buy through
their culinary incapacity. Out of these
spoiled meals; out of this indigestibIe.
unpalatable food; out of the disgust
which such barbarous cooking breeds,
arises thu cravings for drink which
to the saloon for comfort and compensa-
ton.
1t NAV confidently be asserted that not
ten per cent of the men who drink do so
solely because they relish liquor. When
such positive love of drink exists it is
generally system of disease. Men are
led TO drink or driven to it by external
conditions most often, and nothing is
more conducive to this end than the mis-
10 1iatTra,, hIah - the lSt
of the poor. The man who knows that
he has a wholesome, savOry meal await
ing MIN at home is not likely to hnger at
the saloon. The life which grows up
about the latter place IL not a natural
one. The customers of the bar seek the
Place as an alternative quite as often as
because they like it, They are fugitives
from discomfort, from bad and repulsive
food, from dirt and evil smells; not sell
dom from the foul moods bred in their
| wOmenkind by misery, rum and beer.
Women are driven to- drink by the hope
lessness of making homes for their hus-
bands and children. Their ignorance of
cooking and housekeeping thwarts all
their efforts. and they attribute the
| squalOr in which they vegetate to their
poverty, and fall back on the saloon as a
source of fOrgetfulness.
Teach them or their daughters to cook.
ana Ut once IlSilt u let Ill OH THEIR
| ened lives. They then hold talisman
| which will bring their husbands from the
rum shop and keep them at home, which
| is more. They can then establish some
| thing like a family circle, and the nu-
\ cleus fixed. new means of extending the
| wholesome influence will develop of
| themselves. The whole character of the
| average wOrkingman can be improved,
| elevated, sweetened. by this one instru-
mentality. 1t is no doubt possible to
diet man out of anarchism even. Your
| natural Anarchist is dyspeptic. He is
soured by mal-nutritIOn. Feed him
back into good health and vigorous di-
| gestion a nd he will laugh at the gloomy
| and truculent ideas which had posses
sion of him. Good cooking can be made
| to count fo- n great deal in the solution
of difficult social problems. and partic-
| ularly in the settlement of the drink
| question. If all the temperance organ
| izations would add a cooking school at
| tachment 10 their working apparatus,
they would find conversions from drink
| not only easier and numerous but more
| enduring. Teach the girls to cook and
| an immense deal of friction will be elm
| mated from modern life. Temperance
and wholesome food are natural allies
and partners, and bad food is the great
| est incentive to drink that can be named.
| BY all means, therefore, let the cooking
schools he heartily approved and sup
| ported.